Life Changing

The Downfall of us All       1.12.11
                                  (I am not attached to the title. The essay is on Materialism)
(Some parts are rough---just getting some ideas down)
(person who is helping me with ideas)
Max, you could start with some statistics on incoome in America verses the rest of the world then the average debt in America.   Why if we make so much are we so in debt?I have seen some articles in US News and World Report on what the average person considered necessities in the 1970’s and what the people of the 1990’s considered necessities.   Now the one I’m thinking of was probably written in the 1990’s but you might be able to google something like that get some interesting info to kick off you speech.   You know your “hook”/attention getter.   Then start your speech with this paragraph that you have worked on.

Advertising has a funny way of making us believe that a product will make us happier. Beaten into our everyday lives on billboards, TV, magazines, newspaper, and the radio, they constantly show us the thing that we just can’t live with out, the model better than the last one and the product that will change your life forever. We have grown into people who need “things” to make us feel good. We get caught up in a lot. Clothes lose style, iPods get thinner, cars go faster. What we have just isn’t good enough. But when do we stop? When is enough, enough? There is a difference between what we want and what we need. This is a big problem that needs to get fixed. This new way of life has many different names, but it is widely recognized as materialism.

A recent poll showed that 80% of Americans are in debt. The combined amount of debt owed is $2.42 trillion, just in credit card debt alone. The average person in America is in $15,000 worth of debt. The objective of this essay was to create a need in America. I think the need in America is the things we don’t need. The company Ferrari sold a car for over $9 million. Think of all the...